


Girl Talk

by Measured_Words



Category: Othello - Shakespeare
Genre: Female Friendship, Gen, Handkerchiefs, Love, Marriage, Relationship Advice
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 19:30:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,222
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2823467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Measured_Words/pseuds/Measured_Words
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emilia and Desdemona talk about life and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Girl Talk

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afewreelthoughts](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afewreelthoughts/gifts).



> Thank you to my betas, Nary and QuantumButterfly! I hope this is to your liking and that you are having a good first yuletide! It was fun to revisit this play, it had been a while since I'd read it :)

Emilia ran the brush through her mistress's hair. Desdemona had her eyes closed, enjoying the sensation, and so Emilia felt free to scowl into the looking glass. Her own hair was brittle and tangled much more easily, but a soldier's wife couldn't afford the indulgences of vanity afforded to Venetian nobles. What was more aggravating was that Desdemona was too nice to fairly resent. Instead, Emilie decided to resent her husband. That came much more easily, and her current position was certainly his fault, one way or another.

Having reached this conclusion, she realized that while she couldn't resent Desdemona overly much, she certainly envied the happiness of her marriage. It wouldn't last, but for the moment it seemed more agreeable than her arrangement.

"And so," she said, securing the snood. "Lady, you are fairer than the sun, and no worse for our stormy trip."

Desdemona opened her eyes and smiled, reaching back to cover the hand Emilia had lain on her shoulder. "Many thanks. This first dinner here in Cyprus excites me so! I have travelled very little." She stood, drawing her strawberry-stitched handkerchief from her bosom, sniffing it and sighing. "And to be once more in the company of my beloved husband! That brings on altogether another excitement. I am quite keen to hear of this new victory – it should prove most engaging." She turned, facing Emilia now. "Surely you know how I feel. You have been a soldier's wife much longer than I."

She couldn't help her snort of incredulity. "Oh indeed! It is a far cry from being the wife of a common solider to being the wife of our city's most noted general. I would fain stay home and tend to my business, and leave Iago to manage his own."

Desdemona's brow wrinkled. "Dearest Emilia! I hope that your attendance on me has not placed you under any burden. Pray – tell me it is not so!"

"My service to you is no burden." She was able to say it honestly. "Were I travelling with my husband, my lot would be quite different. Rooms in the castle would not be forthcoming so readily."

Her mistress nodded slowly. "I would forsake all earthly comforts to be with my love. Is it not the same for you?"

This time, Emilia manage to retain some of her composure, merely arching her eyebrows. "My wedding vows were spoken some ten years ago – yours not yet two months past, lady. Was I at one time so swayed by sentiment, I cannot now recall it."

"When first I met my love, it was at my father's house, listening to the tales of his youth. I fear I had to dissemble to my father, lest he divine how enthralled I was by this history and forbid me further access." Desdemona smoothed the embroidery of the handkerchief as she talked. "For every hardship he described, I wished myself then at his side, to ease his pains and discomforts, to bring joy and hope to his darkest hours. Even now this is my wish. Would that I could have sailed with him to face the Turks!"

"What youthful foolishness, lady!" The voyage from Italy had been more than sufficiently taxing, in her opinion.

"Love can be foolish, I avow. Yet I promised to cherish and to serve my husband, come whatever difficulties lay before us. Not all will be so forthright as an army, and so would I rather stay by him that we might be each other's strength and comfort."

"How do you mean, lady?" Emilia imagined several obstacles herself, but wondered what among these had occurred to Desdemona. The lady in question was contemplating that handkerchief again, as though its embroidered stitches held some augury of the future. 

"I love Othello, yet the world does not. There is much in him to love – strength, bravery, loyalty, charm.... Were I concerned about such matters, his own lineage is as noble, if not more so, than mine own. Yet, though Venice sees fit to employ him as their servant, I knew that to be with him was to face censure. It rent my heart in twain, knowing that there was no other way but to deceive my father, yet there are none in Venice so honourable as my Moor. They call him valiant to his face, but when he is gone about their business, then the truth does out, and they call him warlike, barbaric, savage. Others who love him without reservation are few, though I believe the Duke to be among them. Even my father, who did profess his friendship to Othello, placed him at his right hand at his own table – did accuse him of savagery and witchcraft in my wooing! This is not love or friendship."

Desdemona looked up, crumpling the handkerchief, then kissing it. "But I can bear this censure. As long as I am with my love, the looks and whispers do not matter. I concern myself not on my own behalf... Yet my wifely duties demand that I face further forward, and look to our issue and the continuation of his noble line." She paused. "Have you any children, Emilia?"

Emilia laughed sharply. "No, none. I have taken pains that it should remain so."

"But why?" Her mistress seemed completely flummoxed. 

"My husband's ambitions never lay in legacy. Why should I shackle myself to a brood of demanding brats?" She shook her head. "Soldiers, too, lack the confidence of husbands whose reign over their household is more closely held in hand, and my husband is a jealous man."

"Mine is not," Desdemona answered simply, confidence bolstered by her still-new, as-yet untested love.

"That may be so, lady. As for myself, I have known men, whose venereal states did clearly declare their own infidelities, to decry the fruits of their own dear wives' wombs as another's when they reckoned the child came too early or too late."

"No doubts could be cast on the parentage of my children. It would be clearly declared – for all to see."

"This troubles you, lady?"

"I will love our children as I love my husband. My troubles lie beyond the protective reach of a mother's arms, in the hard hearts of strangers."

"Words I have heard from every mother I've known." Emilia thought other mothers may have had less specific cause for concern, but Desdemona seemed to take her words under serious consideration.

"This is wise counsel – and at present these are concerns for the future..." She smoothed her dress over her flat stomach, then gave a smile that was partly shy and partly wicked. "Though in this reunion, perhaps the seed of that future may be planted."

Emilia returned the wicked grin, eschewing the shyness. The Moor was not to her tastes, though parts of him were certainly well formed. She'd managed to wheedle enough details out of Desdemona to know how well he satisfied her – here was something else to envy. She found she cared far less for Iago's rough embraces now than she had in her youth, but age had tempered him little. "Then, lady, shall we to dinner, to lay before your lauded husband the most delectable of fruits for his remove?"

Desdemona blushed, then smiled, tucking her handkerchief into her sleeve before taking Emilia's arm. "That would please me very much."

**Author's Note:**

> ...as an aside, writing this made me have to seriously consider the possibility of Iago and Emilia having kids. I do feel like 'NOPE!' is the only sane answer!


End file.
